the next question

Typically, the second question people ask about the trip is, "How was the food?" Everything we had was good! Honestly, though, the hotels we stayed in catered to tourists, so I can't tell you how authentically Israeli the food was. Nonetheless, there was very little we were offered that wasn't well prepared and presented.

If nothing else, we could depend on there being lots of color available. Condiments and vegetables of all kinds adorned the table, whether the hotel buffet at breakfast and dinner, or the street restaurants we stopped in for lunch. Most days for lunch we were offered falafel or shawarma wrapped in fresh pita. While I enjoyed the shawarma, shaved roasted chicken (or beef), I fell in love with the falafel -- a tasty mix of Israeli chick peas and parsley, deep fried to look an awful lot like a meatball, then smushed into pita. Just the right amount of crisp crust, and a really fun shade of green!

Breakfast is always a delight for me. I love to start the day with a cup of coffee and something delicious on a plate or in a bowl in front of me. The fresh yogurt bar became my only breakfast stop by the end of the week. (At first, I was determined to try a variety of breakfast offerings, but I could only do fish once, and there was simply no bacon at all -- a whole week of hotel breakfasts without even smelling bacon!) Fresh dates, dried fruit, seeds, granola and kashi waited as toppings for fresh, creamy yogurt. And always an assortment of jellies, jams, and syrups to add a little sweetness and flavor. My toppings of choice: honey, granola, sunflower seeds, and dried dates. Nearby sat the light pastries. Light as in very airy! My favorite were the chocolate croissants.

Coffee. I love coffee. At home, I sit with a big mug of it, and nurse it for as long as I can. In Israel, the cups were smaller, and the coffee different. Our first lunch out at a nifty little local place, our tour manager advised us not to drink the Turkish coffee that came after our meal! Too late! We had already drained our Dixie cups of the stuff! "I can't stand the stuff," he declared. But I really liked the unusual flavor. There was something added that I couldn't quite place. On Tuesday, in a shop in Jericho, I learned that the mysterious flavor was cardamom. Mystery solved, and I bought three bags of coffee to bring home. It's not the same grind as our drip coffee, so I have to mix it with regular coffee, but then I get the best of both -- a big mug, and the taste I remember. On an unrelated note, I learned to savor a nice 3:00pm espresso while in Israel.

And then I'm asked about the wine. My roommates and I were happy to find some lovely Golan Heights wine in the gift shop at the River Jordan. Dry and red, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Not being much of a wine snob, I won't even try to say more about it, except that it tasted equally good whether served in a wine glass or a coffee mug, and with three of us in the room, it seemed to not last very long!

The absolute best, I would have to say, were the little treats from street vendors. Always enough to share (which is how I got a taste) and always just the right amount of sweet, salty and satisfying, from the nutty nougaty roll to the bagel. Fantastic!

lunchtime

"Mozzarella balls always seem a better idea before I eat them."

"Yeah. It's almost like my memory of them is better than they are. And cheese sticks are just bad when they get cold."

"Exactly.....Pretty much they are bad unless they are burning everything--the plate, your fingers, your tongue. If they are not too hot to taste, they really aren't all that great. Maybe I just don't really like mozzarella, and just never realized it."

"Ha! Maybe. But string cheese is good. Maybe it's the breading that's bad. "

"Yeah. String cheese is good stuff. It's mostly just raw cheese sticks."

Something to think about.

it's what's for dinner

Who would have thought that sauerkraut could cause such strong reactions in people? Honestly, I had no idea.

I grew up with no particular New Year's Day traditions, other than perhaps finishing my thank you notes before school started up again. My grandparents would come for dinner, but holiday dinners were always something different, and usually something we'd never had before (or again after, for that matter). [When I was a little older, possibly my early teens, I remember Gramma Katie meeting me at the door on New Year's Day, and telling me not to come in. When she saw the confusion on my face, she explained that it was good luck for the first visitor of the year to be male, so I would have to wait until Dad or my brother to walk through the door first. Since then, I have tried to more sneakily incorporate this tradition.] It wasn't until I met my husband that I started to experience the concept of "traditional" foods on holidays and other special occasions. Since then, we have developed our own food traditions, particularly on Christmas Eve.

The other day, while grocery shopping for the week, we modified Jonathan's menu to have steak on New Year's Day with Mom. After getting the steaks, chicken and some bacon from the butcher, I turned to Guy and asked if we should get some shrimp, too. I didn't think anything of it, other than it makes a nice appetizer when dinner's not quite ready. I found out later that when one of the boys asked why we'd gotten shrimp (it wasn't on the menu, after all, and we tend to be sticklers there), he said that it was because I'd remembered that it was traditional for his family to have shrimp on New Year's Day. When I heard the explanation, I admitted that had nothing to do with it, but I will try to remember to include it in the future, since it clearly means more to him than either of us had realized.

What does all this have to do with sauerkraut? Well, I can't stand the stuff. We live in an area of the country that is steeped in Germanic tradition, and apparently that New Resident Handbook that we seemed to have misplaced when we relocated from a totally different area of the country includes the fact that here, if you want to survive the year, you must have pork and sauerkraut on New Year's Day for good luck. For the first few years here, I would try patiently to explain that I did not have any ties to this particular tradition, and that since I didn't know it, it couldn't possibly apply to me. For most of the years since, I've just avoided talking about the menu for this particular day off. Today, however, I posted as my Facebook status: "So glad I did not grow up with that pork and sauerkraut on New Year's thing so I don't have to pass it on! Happy New Year! Bring on the surf and turf!" (Have I mentioned that I can't stand sauerkraut??)

What a response! Most people, as usual, had some variation of "if you'd only try mine, you'd like it!" And while lemon pepper or garlic and hot peppers do sound as though they would improve the stuff, I'm still not sold. The one comment about leaving out the juniper berries may have come closer to the issue, but still.

Before I go on, I should probably say that I am of Polish/Eastern European and Irish descent. Kraut is not completely foreign to me. I've known, from a very young age, that I would have starved at an even younger age had I been raised in the Old Country, based on those foods I was introduced to. Boiled food makes me hungry within an hour (except for pasta, which makes me hungry in 2 hours. Chinese food fills me for hours; sometimes days) and I just can't do kraut. Kielbasa and pierogies, on the other hand, I could eat, and is still one of my favorite meals, provided the pierogies are filled with potatoes and cheese, not kraut. We used to tell the boys that if they were not good, Santa would put a can of sauerkraut in their stockings. Seriously, that's how I feel about the stuff.

In college, the dining hall was on a 10-day schedule, and in the rotation was Reuben sandwiches and hermit cookies. The only day to get the hermits was the day with the Rubens. Those hermits were good. As a result, I decided I could like Reuben for the sake of the cookies. And they weren't bad, despite being made with pumpernickel, corned beef and kraut--none of which I liked. At all. I thought maybe it was the combination of all things together, or the hermits as a reward. Or the chocolate milk. Whatever it was, it got to where I actually looked forward to Reuben day.

Until the day I realized that Reuben night always found me feeling rather sick; wicked cramps, and a terrible grinding in my belly. My beloved lunch was turning on me, I thought, and then it occurred to me that until I started eating sauerkraut, I didn't have that problem. By Christmas, I had given them up, and didn't have the semi-weekly nausea.

You can say all you want that it was probably the bread. Or the meat. Or it could also have been the cookies. But I know, deep inside, that it was the cursed kraut. It's just icky. And how could that possibly mean good luck to me? Anyone who wants to can have it for their dinner on January 1. I'll stick with what I know will make me happy. And won't stink up my kitchen. This year, steak with buerre d'maitre, and all the fixin's. Oh, it was good!

And shrimp cocktail. It's tradition.

jars and vessels

The recipe called for 2/3 cup of smooth peanut butter. When I checked the shelf, I found not one, not two, but three nearly empty jars. From the three jars, that apparently no one could use to make a sandwich, I managed to get just about all I needed for the cookies. Of course, this means that plenty of sandwiches could have come from those jars! It seems every time I use the peanut butter, there are nearly empty jars on the shelf.

And every time, I wonder where I have gone wrong.

When I muse aloud where I've gone wrong, the response is usually along the lines of "what are you talking about??" In reality, I really want to know! What I mean is, I never would have considered opening another jar if there was anything at all in an open jar already on the shelf--or in the case of my growing up, in the lazy susan. I would have gotten peanut butter all over my fingers trying to get the last bit out to put on my bread (like I did today for the cookies), rather than risk Mom seeing two open jars. I don't even remember her ever saying anything to me about it; it was just one of those things I knew, no matter what--whether it was peanut butter, ketchup (two bottles in the fridge yesterday), cereal (two open boxes of mini-wheats last week), or anything else (like the two bottles of water on my counter right now), we, or at least, I, would not risk the perceived waste or extravagance of multiples like that.

Three jars.

I guess to be fair, I must say that two of the jars were creamy, and one was super chunk, but the fact of the matter is, there were also relatively full jars open on the shelf, too. That's a grand total of five jars open, three of which were just about spent--but would never have gone anywhere if Henry hadn't asked for peanut butter cookies. Sheesh.

Where did I go wrong?

As I've mentioned before, in the past I have been prone to meltdowns. Occasionally, they appeared to be triggered by such minor infractions or annoyances. (In reality, they were stress related, but since the stress was due to my own internalization, we all managed to blame them on dumb stuff like spilled milk.) Did I not ever make my displeasure obvious when it comes to multiple open containers? Did I freak out too many times, so no one paid any attention? Am I really the only one who cares that there is an entire shelf of open peanut butter? Really? Have I cleaned up and taken care of the extra stuff too readily (like today, and like the ketchup yesterday), thereby not making the job seem unlikeable? Or the opposite--did I have one of them clean it up too often, so they really, truly convince themselves that they cannot see the already open containers?

From time to time, I've asked, "Why is there an almost empty jar of peanut butter on the shelf?" (I could not ask today--I was the only one at home.) Invariably the response is, "I thought it was empty." Which of course leads to the question, "Why didn't you rinse it and put it in the recycle then?" In response to which I'll hear, "Oh! I thought you meant the other jar...." Our household version of "not me," it seems.

Then again, every time I come across these jars, I'm reminded of one of the funniest things I ever saw out our kitchen window. As I cleaned up the kitchen after breakfast on a beautiful, sunny and crisp fall day, I looked out the window and saw a peanut butter jar bouncing across the yard. Thinking I would head out pick it up and put it in our recycle, despite knowing it was not from our can--it wasn't our brand--it started to bounce up the cherry tree. That's when I realized the jar was attached to a squirrel. More correctly, the squirrel had stolen someone's relatively empty jar, and was attempting to snack on it! I watched him carry the jar up; no mean feat, as the jar was clearly larger than him! Before long, the jar fell from the tree, making a rather loud "THUNK" as it hit the ground. As I laughed until I cried, I found myself quite thankful that I had not been under that tree! Ever since, I have been pretty scrupulous about cleaning out the jars before putting them in the recycle.

But I still wonder when or how my kids will "get" the whole "finish one before you start another one" thing. Or if I've really missed out on teaching them a really important life lesson.

giving thanks

Today is Thanksgiving--my favorite of all holidays. That says a lot, because I am not much for "favorites." My favorite color depends on so many things: my mood, the season, the day of week...same goes for my favorite food, flower, whatever. But Thanksgiving is different. I can say, honestly, that I just love everything about it.

First of all, the weather doesn't much matter, since food is the attraction, and I love food. Then there is the fact that there are not many Thanksgiving commercials, ads or sales. Decorating for Thanksgiving is pretty simple, too, and doesn't just apply to the one day. There isn't a whole lot of buildup.

And that, quite frankly, is the biggest attraction to me: it's a low-key holiday. Just some food and football, and a lot of time and space for introspection.

I am a lucky woman. I have a wonderful husband; we've spent literally half our lives together, and I'm so looking forward to enjoying at least as many more years together. We've made a lovely home, even if our house is quite a mess at times! Life here is good--we laugh, we cry, we play....I wouldn't want it any other way. The boys light up my life, truly. They make me crazy sometimes, but their spirit drives me forward. Watching them grow and mature has been a gift. Their futures intrigue me, and the unfolding is fascinating.

I am so very grateful for our extended family--sisters and brothers, cousins, aunts and uncles, and all those who make up their households. Each and every one of them is so very special to me; I could never imagine life without them. Aside from the warmth of familial love, each of them adds so much joy to my life. Visits with our family members from the far corners of the country always result in the most amazing memories. I am grateful for all those memories each and every day.

Living apart from family has led to a different dimension in our friendships, and I am so very grateful for the friends we have that are like family to us. There are times when I cannot adequately express my thankfulness for these people in my life. I have friends that I can count on to do more than just visit--we watch out for each other's kids, and we understand and accept each other's idiosyncrasies. Some of these friends have never been within a mile of our home, and yet their place in my heart is fixed fast. Some I have known since childhood, and some just a few months, and yet each and every one of them has become a part of the quilt of my life--a life that I appreciate so much for all the loose threads and even the occasional mismatched seam.

My life is warm and comfortable and colorful, just the way I like it. At Thanksgiving, especially, I wrap myself in this life-quilt and remember how lucky I am. I have health, a home, a job I like, people I both enjoy and admire, and enough joy to share. What more could I ask for?

a year ago

I love that my status updates from years past show up now on my wall. Seeing what struck me on "this day in history" makes for some great writing prompts! Last year on this date, my status was "Stephanie is very grateful that these peeps are the perfect stage of stale. So need that right now!" I don't know exactly what kind of a day I was having, but it must have been a rough one, and probably emotional. How do I know that? Because of the peep story.

We always had peeps in our Easter baskets. Always yellow chicks--the original peeps. For whatever reason, I always left them for last when eating my Easter candy.....well, almost last: I don't like jelly beans. It was years before I realized that peeps come out of the package squishy and mushy. I preferred eating the chocolate first, so it didn't get that powdery color, and the chocolate was so rich to me that I took my time. After we were married, I discovered two things: 1) that some people don't like peeps at all, and 2) that many people like their peeps fresh, not with a little bit of toothsomeness. I was amazed.

It took a while to get Guy to understand that I just liked them a little stale--maybe a week, on the outside. Then I went to work on the rest of the world. By then, we had moved away from family, and were celebrating Easter among strangers who had become friends. Unbelievably, none of them had ever even tried a stale (ripe?) peep! Some tried, many wouldn't, and very few enjoyed them. Each stale peep, though, still reminds me of my childhood--holidays with Grammy and Grampy, Gramma Katie, Aunt Alice, even Mrs. Ettenberger. Holidays when I was too young to really pay close attention to what the grown-ups were talking about, but too old to go play somewhere else. I was always underfoot (sometimes literally, after dinner was over and they sat at the table having coffee while I crawled around on the floor under the table), and always waiting for just the right moment to celebrate my holiday spoils.

One Easter not long before Dad died, we went to visit for the weekend. When we arrived, Dad pulled out a package of peeps. It hadn't yet been touched, except for the wrapper. It was torn. I looked at Dad and asked what had happened to it. He smiled and said, "I wanted to make sure they were ready for Easter." They were, in fact, exactly the perfect stage of stale. I so needed that right then.

The peeps from last year had been sent in a package from my oldest brother. He'd heard the peep story, and when he and his wife saw the peeps on the shelf at the store, had to send them. There was another time when he was going to visit, so he bought peeps, opened them a tiny bit, and put them on the rear dash of his car so they would 'ripen' before we saw each other. In all these peep exchanges, I've learned that the yellow peeps stale the best, the purple and blue ones never really get stale at all, and the chicks are the best; peppermint star peeps are just not right, except in cocoa, and chocolate covered peeps are an entirely different confection, not to be compared to, or treated like any other peeps.

Like so many other things, peeps make me cry--or, at the very least, tear up, and I would have it no other way. I love my memories being so close to the surface, and I love that the smallest, oddest things can bring them to the surface.

mmmmmm, Lumps in my Farina......